The Net and the Butterfly

The authors, Olivia Fox Cabane and Judah Pollack, argue that breakthrough ideas follow a hidden pattern that recent neuroscience can explain and even help bring about. They compare the brain's creative mode to a butterfly, beautiful but erratic, and its task-focused executive mode to the net needed to catch it, with insight coming when the two work together. They trace a shared origin story from Archimedes in his bath to Adam Cheyer's idea for Siri. Drawing on their coaching work with Silicon Valley firms, they set out a step-by-step process for reaching the brain region where breakthroughs arise and for clearing internal blocks. Exercises include imagining a world without gravity and watching a foreign film without subtitles.

Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, while reading it, described it as a fascinating book on the brain science of creativity.